Avoid empty interfaces

Interfaces define members that provide a behavior or usage contract. The functionality that is described by the interface can be adopted by any type, regardless of where the type appears in the inheritance hierarchy. A type implements an interface by providing implementations for the members of the interface. An empty interface does not define any members. Therefore, it does not define a contract that can be implemented.

If your design includes empty interfaces that types are expected to implement, you are probably using an interface as a marker or a way to identify a group of types. If this identification will occur at runtime, the correct way to accomplish this is to use a custom attribute. Use the presence or absence of the attribute, or the properties of the attribute, to identify the target types. If the identification must occur at compile time, then it is acceptable to use an empty interface.

The interface does not declare any members or implement two or more other interfaces.

By default, this rule only looks at externally visible interfaces, but this is configurable.

Remove the interface or add members to it. If the empty interface is being used to label a set of types, replace the interface with a custom attribute.

It is safe to suppress a warning from this rule when the interface is used to identify a set of types at compile time.